You Are Here

We unearth the dead sparrows from the backyard at dawn, brush them with glue. Pin the patella, the ulna, all the
bird bones to the violet clothesline. The confetti of resurrection: coconut flakes blown from cupped hands at the
sticky bones. Meanwhile indoors, our fathers sit on the kitchen floor. They unhinge light bulb filaments to map
uncharted journeys from 1400. They hand out potato chips with the face of our mother. We eat them at once. As
sacrament, we prick fingertips with thumbtacks, drip globes of blood all over the kitchen floor, all over our
fathers’ maps. The fathers mark each drop You Are Here, and offer a chip in the shape of a looking
glass. We refuse and return to the yard to redeem the birds, but find them disappeared again. In their place hang
deflated balloons the colors of fake fruit: saggy rubber skins flagging in the wind.